Media versus Reality

I’ve been thinking a lot about this TED talk I watched on modelling and images:

The ideas raised in the talk that I’ve been thinking about are:

The idea that photoshopping is the least of it. That these images are so far removed from reality anyway, that it is almost beside the point that they’ve been photoshopped.

The idea that she’s a model and even she doesn’t look like the images of her. She shows a set of slides showing 2 images taken around the same time – one modelling, one “real life”:

The idea that being beautiful is like winning the lottery. You either win or you don’t.

The idea that life isn’t instantly better if you are beautiful. Her life doesn’t resemble the lifestyle that appears in these images. She gives an example of a photo of her looking sexy when at the time, she’d never had a boyfriend and felt really uncomfortable touching this guys.

That on the other hand she does get minor benefits from being beautiful, like avoiding a speeding ticket.

I guess the question for me behind all this is: “Is being beautiful what I really want? Why? What do I think will happen if I was instantly changed to being beautiful? How would my life change? Why would being beautiful make it change?”